TRADES: Mentoring younger-athletes towards success

Continued from page 16 ven is giving these young athletes valuable lessons. He said that Werven becomes an even better athlete by doing this because with teaching comes improvement.

“He does a great job at leading the other heptathlon athletes because they’re freshmen,” Meyer said. “I think the leadership and teaching also have helped him this year to put some things together. When you start to coach or teach other people, I think you learn a lot better. He’s done that really well.”

As a first-year, Kasun said there are a lot of nerves that come with having to do seven different events at one meet.

He said one thing Werven has taught him has been how to mentally prepare for meets.

“When I talked to Simon when we were competing, he told me that after putting in the practice, there’s nothing else you can do to prepare,” Kasun said. “You just have to get yourself mentally ready. There’s no other way to articulate it really.”

On top of mental toughness, Werven said one also needs to be very deliberate in what to focus on.

“Time management is an extremely important part of the event,” Werven said. “A lot of it is dividing and conquering while also building up a schedule for your training. You need to divide the time you have to be able to improve for every single event.”

With that time, Meyer said he takes a more beneficial handsoff approach in regard to figuring out what the athletes need to improve on.

He said he thinks it’s better when they have to put in the time for success.

“I’m really just giving them the tools to make themselves better,” Meyer said. “I can’t just feed them step-by-step. I think it’s better to learn by doing and failing and learn- ing from those mistakes. I give them the guidance and try to let them figure it out on their own.”

Donahe said he likes the way that Meyer facilitates practice because he has learned valuable lessons in training and competing.

“My favorite part about being a multi-event athlete is that it translates to life super well,” Donahe said. “What I’ve learned is balance. You’re not going to be incredible at everything in life, just like in the multi. So, it’s about balancing your strengths versus your weaknesses. Sometimes, you have to work on your weaknesses. You might not like working at what you suck at, but you have to to get better.”